The closing of the office is an unimportant detail of this particular case.
I haven't seen anything else that interprets this case as narrowly as you do.
Says who? All precedent is to be interpreted narrowly in scope wrt to the facts, and that's not even taking into account that judge-made law as a concept is, in general, foreign to most EU jurisdictions (with the UK being the most notable exception). While there is not much dispute over the primacy of the ECJ over national law (although de jure this is not even a given!), there is no reason to assume that broad, general doctrines laid out by the ECJ all of a sudden constitute new law in the members of the Treaty (I mean, I'm not even talking about the ECJ-equivalent of a 'van Gend en Loos' ruling, I'm just talking about de factor interpretation by member state judiciaries and administrations).
Furthermore I'm a bit perplexed at how easily you seem to dismiss the closing of the office, which is absolutely material to this case. It's quite different when a unilateral decision of a party affects the counter party, or if both parties knew what they got into from the start! Also, or maybe 'especially', in employment cases. Please tell what you base your assertion on, because it's in direct contradiction with all literature and practice.
(and yes, I do have a law degree, although it's been a few years since I last studied any EU law, so I'm not claiming to be an expert here).
That being said, the closing of the office was definitely the important fact in this case, but this doesn't narrow the scope of the law. The law says that companies cannot require work weeks of more than 48 hours. Excluding commutes can lead to preposterous results, so there are a variety of circumstances where commute time must be considered as part of the work. This case just happened to be about one such set of circumstances. Where to draw the line is determined by the individual judges.
Right, which is what I said.
"The court ruling said: "The fact that the workers begin and finish the journeys at their homes stems directly from the decision of their employer to abolish the regional offices and not from the desire of the workers themselves."
So, the closure of the office seems to be highly relevant.
A) You go to your workplace to arrive at 8 am, then you travel 150km away to a site. Your commute to the "base" is not included, however, your work time is until you arrive at the base and leave
B) Some employers would just tell you to be at the site at 8am - you'd have to leave 2 hours earlier and not be paid for it
In my understanding, the law regards B, making the employer pay you for your time (I KNOW, THE HORROR /s)
For care workers working on site at clients the varying commute is a condition of their employment at the time they sign the contract. Unless the client's home is in an extremely remote area, there's nothing wrong with the varying commutes.